Yes. From my point of view, too. Jesus' "righteousness and true holiness" so far exceeds anything believers can experience while abiding in Jesus as to make the comparison nearly null and void - like the difference between sunlight and candlelight.

When we submit ourselves to Christ, the heart is united with His heart, the will is merged in His will, the mind becomes one with His mind, the thoughts are brought into captivity to Him; we live His life. This is what it means to be clothed with the garment of His righteousness. Then as the Lord looks upon us He sees, not the fig-leaf garment, not the nakedness and deformity of sin, but His own robe of righteousness, which is perfect obedience to the law of Jehovah. {COL 311.4}

If you will only watch, continually watch unto prayer, if you will do everything as if you were in the immediate presence of God, you will be saved from yielding to temptation and may hope to be kept pure, spotless, and undefiled till the last. {AH 338.2}

Through being partakers of the divine nature we may stand pure and holy and undefiled. {6MR 112.2}

I'm glad to hear it. So we agree that there is a vast difference between the candlelight of true believers' "righteousness and true holiness" and the sunlight of Christ's "righteousness and true holiness," and somewhere in that difference lies the distinction between acceptable to God and unacceptable.

Now let's consider Adam BEFORE his transgression. When God looked at him without a Mediator, were Adam's "righteousness and true holiness" on the acceptable or the unacceptable side from God's point of view?

Acceptable.


Everyone who by faith obeys God's commandments will reach the condition of sinlessness in which Adam lived before his transgression. {HP 146.5}

Through being partakers of the divine nature we may stand pure and holy and undefiled. {6MR 112.2}

I agree.

I think we have narrowed down the range of possibilities regarding the location of the line between acceptable and unacceptable. While the "righteousness and true holiness" of unfallen Adam were acceptable, the "righteousness and true holiness" of true believers are unacceptable.

Just to remove the possibility of confusion, where in the spectrum would you put sinless Adam's "righteousness and true holiness" - brighter than Christ's sunlight (perhaps a supernova) or dimmer (perhaps a halogen or LED bulb)? I say dimmer.

The difference in intensity between the two changed from day to day. "The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." Prov 4:18. The difference between the two on the day before Adam sinned was so ridiculously vast it is virtually unmeasurable. I suspect the level of maturity Adam achieved before he sinned is less than people like Enoch, Moses, Elijah, Daniel, John, Paul, etc.

Christ offered up His broken body to purchase back God's heritage, to give man another trial. "Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them." Hebrews 7:25. By His spotless life, His obedience, His death on the cross of Calvary, Christ interceded for the lost race. And now, not as a mere petitioner does the Captain of our salvation intercede for us, but as a Conqueror claiming His victory. His offering is complete, and as our Intercessor He executes His self-appointed work, holding before God the censer containing His own spotless merits and the prayers, confessions, and thanksgiving of His people. Perfumed with the fragrance of His righteousness, these ascend to God as a sweet savor. The offering is wholly acceptable, and pardon covers all transgression. {COL 156.2}

The problem is Mt Man that you are saying throughout His life Jesus was walking in sinful flesh. The only time Jesus was directly associated with the sins of humanity was when He took the sins of the world on His head during the three days and three nights in the "heart of the earth" the sign of Jonah.

He didn't walk in the condition His whole life. Only from Gethsemane to the cross. He said "now is the hour of the power of darkness" and He took our sins upon His head.

God gave me a vision of when this happened, so I know without impunity that you are wrong about how you are trying to present these things. You assume way too much.

He could have failed but He didn't so He didn't have sinful flesh. He walked in the Spirit and this is the power of the Gospel. This is how born again Christians can be like Christ by faith in His walk.

There is an order to the way we are to interpret the things written in the Spirit of Prophecy and you have no discipline in how you address the issue of the second Adam.

The moment Jesus took our sins upon His head He started sweating blood. How do you justify what you have been saying with this? He had the sinful flesh his whole life but it mysteriously started to cause Him to be separated from God on that day for no reason?

This is how I know you are presenting this in a way that takes away the importance of the sign of Jonah. You just throw things out there as if you know it to be fact and that you are above learning or reproach. You better get it right because you are talking about the most important issue known to man.

Vision or not jsot - you are not correct. Christ was just like us. He was born of a woman, under law. "When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law". It was more that AT Jones who said Christ had sinful flesh. Look also at the publications and editors.

As for Jones and EGW, she praised his work in 1895, 1898 and in 1900 and probably many others times. And jsot says, pay no attention to Jones? EGw rebuked her own husband! Shall we then reject all his writings?

Christ had sinful flesh from the day he was born. It could not have been otherwise. If not, then the temptations of the devil would not have been like ours.

Christ did not have the advantage that Adam had. Christ took upon Him the infirmities of degenerate humanity. Only thus could He rescue man from the lowest depths of degradation. It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man's nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life. {DA 48.5}

MM is right.

Mrs White rebuked her husband for arguing with Mr Smith, not for false doctrines. She also never said his writings should never be quoted.

Your right that AT Jones had a lot to be thankful for before his apostasy, His righteousness by faith message is above reproach and guided by God, But then he slipped into Apostasy, so if you want to quote him after 1888 then you are not being guided by the Holy Spirit.

And on the most important point. The point that none of you seem to be getting....

Could Jesus die?

The wages of sin is death. Jesus had not sinned His whole life so could Jesus die?

If you do not watch yourself here you will never see the truth.

There are several biblical stories that connect directly to this issue. One of the major ones is the serpent on the pole. If you look you will live.

Why was it a serpent that Moses raised on the pole? Because Jesus had to become sin for us before He could physically die. Then He could be raised on the pole, not before.

If Jesus did not take our sins upon His head in the propitiation then He would have never died. He would have been translated to His heavenly body and taken to heaven without seeing death. That is why it was so important for Jesus to accept our sins in Gethsemane. If you cannot see this it means you are not guided by the Spirit.

So if Jesus had not sinned in His mortal life, and He could not have died, then something very important happened, and this is called the "propitiation".

He wasn't born with our sins on His head. He had to accept them.

He wasn't born with sin either. He had to be tempted, and if He failed then He would have died a sinner just like us. That is why everything was on the line in Jesus coming here. But since He was tempted and did not fail He could not physically die unless He accepted OUR sins upon His head... The propitiation.

Anyone who argues against this knows nothing about the ceremonial law.

In order for sins to be transferred, the sinner had to place his hands on the head of the sacrifice and confess. Without it no sin was transferred. Then when the sacrifice was fulfilled the blood carried the sin and it was symbolically placed on the mercy seat (sprinkled on the veil with the handles of the Ark coming through the veil). Then on the day of Atonement the priest would cleans the Mercy seat and carry the sins to be placed on the head of the scapegoat. This cleansing is what Jesus is doing right now.

So I ask again, before He accepted our sins in Gethsemane, could Jesus have physically died? NO! He couldn't, because He had not sinned. If you don't get this it is proof you do not have the Holy Spirit guiding you.

"Christ could not have done this work had He not been personally spotless. Only One who was Himself perfection could be at once the sin bearer and the sin pardoner. He stands before the congregation of His redeemed as their sin-burdened, sin-stained surety, but it is their sins He is bearing. All through His life of humiliation and suffering, from the time that He was born an infant in Bethlehem till He hung on the cross of Calvary, and cried in a voice that shook the universe, “It is finished,” the Saviour was pure and spotless.—Manuscript 165, 1899.{7ABC 461.4}

Christ was without sin, else His life in human flesh and His death on the cross would have been of no more value in procuring grace for the sinner than the death of any other man. While He took upon Him humanity, it was a life taken into union with Deity. He could lay down His life as Priest and also victim. He possessed in Himself power to lay it down and take it up again. He offered Himself without spot to God.—Manuscript 92, 1899. {7ABC 461.5}

Pay close attention here people. You need to understand this!

(In Gethsemane) The humanity of the Son of God trembled in that trying hour. He prayed not now for His disciples that their faith might not fail, but for His own tempted, agonized soul. The awful moment had come—that moment which was to decide the destiny of the world. The fate of humanity trembled in the balance. Christ might even now refuse to drink the cup apportioned to guilty man. It was not yet too late. He might wipe the bloody sweat from His brow, and leave man to perish in his iniquity. He might say, Let the transgressor receive the penalty of his sin, and I will go back to My Father. Will the Son of God drink the bitter cup of humiliation and agony? Will the innocent suffer the consequences of the curse of sin, to save the guilty? The words fall tremblingly from the pale lips of Jesus, “O My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done.”{CSA 33.5}
Three times has He uttered that prayer. 58{CSA 33.6}
Angels beheld the Saviour’s agony. They saw their Lord enclosed by legions of satanic forces, His nature weighed down with a shuddering, mysterious dread. There was silence in heaven. No harp was touched. Could mortals have viewed the amazement of the angelic host as in silent grief they watched the Father separating His beams of light, love, and glory from His beloved Son, they would better understand how offensive in His sight is sin.{CSA 33.7}

If it wasn't for Gethsemane and Jesus accepting the sins of men on His spotless soul He could have gone back to heaven without seeing death because He had not sinned! So the moment He took our sins upon His head was very important. You should pray about this before opening your mouth again APL.

Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He never walked in sinful flesh. He walked in the Spirit. He resisted the unholy clamorings of His sinful flesh.


Ellen White also saw things in vision. Listen: